A harvest of 560,000 tonnes of grapes is expected this year, with about 90,000 tonnes being already ordered by Romanian and Ukrainian importers, head of the Agro-Industrial Agency “Moldova-Vin” Valeriu Mironescu told a news conference Tuesday. Mironescu says the authorities will not restrict the grape export this year at all, so that the farmers can make up this way for the losses caused by drought to other crops and can diminish thus the social problems. In his opinion, producers will get a 400 million lei income only by selling 100,000 tonnes. Valeriu Mironescu conditioned this year’s grape exports on beforehand payments for the quantities ordered by foreign buyers. Experts say that the wine companies in Moldova will be able to buy this year only up to 200,000 tonnes of grapes, which is much less than the previous years. And this is especially because of the uncertainty as regards the wine export to the Russian market, which determines the local wineries to remain passive when it comes to buying grapes. On the other hand, the wine companies will not be able to fully pay for the grapes they purchased due to the money shortage and to the impossibility of taking out new loans. But they still have large supplies of raw materials for wine making – about 24 million dekalitres, which is enough to secure the wine export this year and the next year. About 20,000 tonnes of grapes, especially table varieties, have been gathered and sold up to present, with about 3,500 tonnes being exported. Table grapes are being sold now for 11-24 lei/kg, while the other varieties are being sold for 3.8 – 4.2 lei/kg. Data from “Moldova-Vin” shows that the average harvest of grapes per hectare has been of 4.5 tonnes up to now, as compared to 3.5 last year.